Tim

I am posting on this site as darknight, its a reference to what St John of the Cross wrote about The Dark Night of the Soul. It sounds to me as if you were a Protestant, probably Evangelical church. I was and the leaders, and followers were completely ignorant of spiritual formation, perhaps wilfully. I went through something quite like the dark night of the soul, and it sounds to me as if your experience is similar. You speak of confusion, of struggling to hear clearly from God. St John also speaks about these things. My own experiences were not exactly like St John’s but what I learned from his writings and those of others like Teresa of Avila is that in two thousand years of Christianity experiences like mine are not unknown, and certainly not a sign that God isn’t there. I haven’t experienced the blisfullness St John speaks of, but what I do now know is that spiritual life is so much more complex than the trite answers of far too many “churches”.
Those who claim to lead who don’t know about this, who berate those going through these experiences, merely reveal their own ignorance, the shallowness of their own experience.

There are other traditions in Christianity than Christianity by performance. Henri Nouwen writes from the contemplative tradition, others write from other perspective whether it Annie Lammott from her own crazy but on target perspective or John Eldredge, whose writings are surprisingly full of references to the saints from all the ages past.